Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday November 24, 2010 @10:19AM
from the watch-how-you-play dept.

mernilio writes "According to UPI: 'A Massachusetts school district superintendent said a memo banning sixth graders from carrying pencils was written without district approval. North Brookfield School District interim Superintendent Gordon Noseworthy said Wendy Scott, one of two sixth-grade teachers at North Brookfield Elementary School, did not get approval from administrators before sending the memo to all sixth-grade parents, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported Thursday. The memo said students would no longer be allowed to bring writing implements to school. It said pencils would be provided for students in class and any students caught with pencils or pens after Nov. 15 would face disciplinary action for having materials 'to build weapons.'"

Welcome to the days where school has become nothing but a crappy day-care replacement.

No, I'm serious. In most public schools, the purpose is not for the kids to learn. The purpose is to pay substandard wages to a bunch of idiots who were too dumb to realize what they were really getting into, give them zero support and tools to actually enforce classroom discipline, and then tell them to just keep the kids in the building between the hours of

And when little Roshanjam, the 9th son of Shaniqua who has 8 other half-brothers and no daddy for any of them, gets into fights and gangs and knifes people and someone actually hauls him in, there she is crying and screaming "racism" and unwilling to accept that no, her kid is a criminal little punk who has his head straight up his own ass.

and

and in the meantime the deadbeat shithead parents are busy getting a lawyer and spinning sob stories to the media about how their "good little angel" is getting a bad rap because of the "racist teacher who obviously hates them."

How is he telling the truth when the poster has to create completely bullshit scenarios to prop up his argument? Unless he actually knows of a little Roshanjam, who is the 9th son of Shaniqua who has 8 other half-brothers and no daddy for any of them? Heck, the entire post was made up of hypothetical examples. Why not use a real life example, there are plenty out there.

It's trolling when he has to pull completely hypothetical situations out of his ass to prop up an argument, which shows that he's more in

What I'm curious about though, is why the teacher felt this memo was necessary in the first place; TFA doesn't mention this.

When I was in grade school, we used to fling sharpened pencils like crossbow bolts, using several rubber bands for higher tension. It wasn't uncommon to draw blood from these toys... and there would be quite a firefight whenever the teacher turned his or her back toward the class to write on the board. So, I think that's why the summary mentions "materials to build weapons," but it's still a stupid idea to ban pencils.

In reception class (age 5) we wrote with those thick (1cm) artists pencils.

On the first day of Year 1, age 5-and-a-bit-more, the teacher explained that since we were now big boys and girls we could write with thin pencils, and put a box on every desk. The boy opposite me took one, stood up, walked round to me, and stuck it up my nose. I remember having a bad nosebleed, but fortunately nothing worse. The boy was forced to use a thick pencil for some time.

What I'm curious about though, is why the teacher felt this memo was necessary in the first place; TFA doesn't mention this.

Isn't it obvious, they're worried about weapons. If they bring in pencils they have graphite. All they need to do is purify uranium and they can use this to moderate an atomic pile. Next thing they will have weapons-grade plutonium.

Heh, my wife got in trouble for sending home a similar "unauthorized memo", saying that if they felt the gang violence at school was too dangerous, they should stay home.

This was after several kids got knives and guns pulled on them by the library... and somewhat after some gangstas pulled a fire alarm to distract administration while they had a little gangwar to beat up some kids behind the school. She went to the administration first, a few days later the security guy gives the kids a self-defense semina

My assumption is that she had an issue in her class with students using pencils in ways that were unexpected by the manufacturers. Remembering fondly my middle school years, I have no doubt this is the case. Hell, remembering my high school years, I have no doubt this is the case. My classmates found all sorts of unique "uses" for writing implements and other school supplies.

PS. Can we stop linking to articles which include sentences such as "Wendy is too uptight, one night with me she will loosen up, and s

As Boortz has said, sending your children to a government school in the U.S. is tantamount to child abuse.... and the public-educated pupils from American schools are the clever ones. Private schools in America appear to just exist to take money from parents, and store the children during the day.

A while ago I used to help out with an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class - we had American exchange students. Students who had made their way to university from state schools in the US read and wrote at about the equivalent of a UK 14- to 15-year-old. Students from a private school background were essentially retarded. They managed to read at a UK high-school level with some encouragement, and struggled to write at that level.

Strangely enough, we had American exchange students in because there was no "Remedial English" class for university students. These were ostensibly English-speaking (well, they could *speak* English, they just couldn't read or write it) students from the US - English was supposedly their first language.

Like edawstwin above, I attended both public and private schools in the U.S. - in fact, three of each.

While there is truth to the assertion that some private schools are much better than others, this doesn't take into account how bad many government schools are. I attended one private school that is one of the best in the United States, and another which was the Baptist-run type referred to, with underqualified teachers. Despite this handicap, that Baptist school still performed better than the local go

I rememeber a classmate bringing a (sharp) sword to class to show off to his friends. No one made a stink about it, becasue he was unlikely to shoot anyone with it. We just weren't scared back then. There was occasional serious violence, which was briefly interesting, but we just went on with life.

At my high school during deer and duck seasons in the fall, there were enough rifles and shotguns in the student parking lot to start a small war. There was also an ethic that said using anything but your fists in a fight was the ultimate cowardly act. Sadly, neither of those is true today. Now, get off my lawn.

That's the point, isn't it? People intending violence brought guns - pistols usually purchased the night before for $50, and very dangerous to the person standing next to your target. We had 4 shootings while I was in high school. Three were escalations from girlfriend "stolen" -> fist fight -> gunshot (and in all three, if was a person standing next to the intented victim who left in a ambulance). One was the French teacher getting shot in class (I remember being completely unsurprised by that, so I guess she wasn't well liked).

We, students and teachers alike, understood that the people not the weapons were the danger, and someone bringing his Ninja Toys to class was no threat to anything beyond his own dignity.

Maybe it's me, but isn't the proper headline "Students NOT banned from bringing pencils to school"?

After all, the district said that the teacher sent the memo without permission of the superintendent and that it did not reflect district policy. So we got an overzealous and whacked out teacher, which is certainly not news.

Sure, then the district disciplines this teacher for excessive nuttery and everyone goes back to their day to day lives. Several weeks later, some kid stabs another kid with a pencil on the way to school and the victim ends up with a piece of graphite permanently lodged under his skin. Now you have someone with a PERMANENT DISFIGUREMENT because this teacher's sage warning wasn't heeded. That kid becomes a poster child for our schools' failure to keep our children safe, and before you know it we have the TSA moving in and strip-searching the kids to look for pencils before they can enter the school building. Meanwhile, the disciplined teacher goes on to a successful career as a security consultant working with the Department of Homeland Security to help prevent future attacks using graphite-based WMDs (Writing implements of Minor Disturbance). After that, it's only a matter of time before the Department of Education gets absorbed into the DHS.

All of this could have been avoided if we had just taken this warning seriously and immediately banned all sharp writing implements from schools. All pencils and pens should be replaced with nice blunt magic markers. For math classes or other times when frequent erasing is needed, they can use an Etch-a-Sketch (tm). This seems like a minor sacrifice to ensure the safety of our children.

I have some graphite permanently lodged under my skin. It's been there since I was 15. In a pretty relaxed lesson someone on the other side of the room said "catch, Xaxa". I didn't catch it very well, and the over-sharpened tip hit my hand. I couldn't get the graphite out then, let alone now.

Actually, you raise a good point. Please, someone think of the children. Seriously. It's sad that their education is in the hands of people who seek to not only indoctrinate them and teach them multitudes of useless information that they'll quickly forget since they don't use.

Not like homeschooling is a better option, where a parent is free to substitute their own "facts," or leave out certain things completely, crippling the child when they attempt to do anything requiring that knowledge, but the true danger of home schooling is the lack of socialization with people of differing backgrounds, leading to an insular world view that assumes everyone is the same, and an inability to cope with society at large.

Ok, seriously seriously. I ask this honest question: Is a big percentage of American people really stupid and paranoid like that? Students can't bring pencils to schools? What should they bring, then, their PSPs?

Understand that progressives have long held our academic system hostage and thus our children. Political Correctness is the first consideration of any policy in the public school system as a result. Most parents, and the general public, look at these policies with disgust. However, most people can't afford to pull their kids out of public school (unfortunately) and the teachers union has a strong lobby that keeps idiots like this dumb broad in her position no matter what she does. So you have a system that

Pencils are certainly dangerous weapons, and books are hazardous too. I suggest a technical approach to child safety. Encase each child in a special pod that takes care of feeding and waste while connecting their minds to a central instruction program that provides enhanced virtual instruction. The excess body heat could even be recovered to provide energy to the school.

Students really should be hog tied and gagged. This will stop them from using their bodies as weapons (fists, feet, teeth, sheer mass pushing another mass, etc). Also, put each child into a little divider/cubicle so none of them can give "evil glances" that might emotionally harm another student. Completely immobilize and segregate each child, no harm can be passed from one to another!

Yet another FINE example of intellectually stunted individuals being put in a position of educating our children.And another FINE example of said intellectual amoeba eschewing proper channels, or even common sense in implementing something that's utterly pointless and only generates an aura of fear and distrust in what is, ostensibly, an educational institution.

I herd the TSA has offered the school to install full body scanners at the gates. Apparently a class room was almost hijacked the other week by six year old terrorists carrying sticks of grey plasticine and safety scissors.

So much so that they'd rather take some dudgeon mongering website's word for what happened than to google the original sources and find out this is a non-story. Well, I don't mind being wet blanket, so I did it for you.

If you must know, a couple of sixth grade teachers got fed up with students playing with toy pens, then losing them and disrupting the class looking for them. So they decided to ban student owned writing instruments altogether, but rather than come right out and tell parents that their kids are badly behaved, they used a pen modified by one of the students to shoot spitballs as an excuse for the ban. Since using a writing instrument as a "weapon" conjures images of students stabbing each other in the eye with a pencil, that naturally garnered a lot more attention than the teachers expected. The acting superintendent stepped in, reversed the policy and wrote a memo explaining everything and suggesting everybody calm down.

But of course the story of a couple of beleaguered teachers being too timid to tell parents they'd raised a mob of brats isn't as much fun for people who like to complain about the nanny state.

I worked in a high school for 2 years. Parents don't want to hear that they're kids are brats. They want any evidence they can get to rationalize the myth that poor teachers are the problem with our education system. One quick story...

The junior class at the school was turning into a bunch of fuck-ups. Poor academics, drugs, mediocre sports performance, etc. So, the principal who was a really good guy calls an assembly, sends *ALL* the teachers out except for the VP and has a "man-to-man" talk with the whole junior class. He basically told them they were screwing up their lives and needed to straighten up before they've ruined their opportunity there. Well, all the kids run home and tell exaggerated...scratch that flat out lies about what he said to them. Saying he called them worthless, stupid, etc. This caused an uproar with all the parents bitching to the administration for daring to suggest that their sweet little babies could be anything short of Sainthood-candidates. I'd been working at the school for a while at this point and I knew the deal, and I was a computer lab tech. Kids would come in all the time to hang out during breaks. So, I'd get the lowdown from them and surreptitiously steer them into telling me *exactly* what he said. Of course, it was quite different from the cry baby story they all ran home and told mommy and daddy. And, that's our education system in microcosm. Parents sending less disciplined children to school to be simultaneously educated and parented because so many of them aren't getting the job done at home.

Coincidentally, about 10 years later I found out a friend had attended that school when I struck up a conversation with her mother. Just to reinforce the point, her daughters were habitual skippers (though they did get their acts together). But, she blamed the principal when he threatened police action (I never knew you could be charged with this!) if she didn't get her girls to start coming to classes. Kind of sad to hear her mother saying this, because her daughter was really hot too (really turned me off on the girl after seeing that side of her family).

I have to admit there's a "dark passenger" part of me that loves this shit, and thinks the people of this country deserve every damned scan, grope and pencil ban that the government can dump on them. Is that wrong? It's not a big part, but it's there.

I remember some time ago when it was the rage to fold paper and shoot it at each other with rubber bands. For awhile rubber bands were considered a "regulated" item, and getting caught with a piece of rolled up paper could get you in trouble.

"V" darts shot by rubber bands and whatever that thing was called when you twisted a loop of paper over the end of a pencil and flicked it as if you were playing "pencil break"... ah yes the memories...

we looped the rubber band between our thumb and index finger and fired them like a slingshot

didn't want to waste a rubber band, had more control, and more discrete. I was quite the good shot. It was the little darts that were rolled really tight that were the most 'effective'. Only the amateurs would try to shoot loosely rolled large strips of paper.

Technically suicide can be construed as murder, in which case Japan is well ahead of us with 24.4/100k compared to our 11.1/100k, the difference being more than enough to make up for the gap of 4.6 in our murder rates. (also from Wikipedia)

Actually, I am pretty sure that measure is to counter violence, but since when has "weapons control" laws ever resulted in decreased violence? [...] But does that stop murders and mayhem? Nope! It just making the killings more gruesome and painful.

You explicitly said that strict gun laws did not decrease the amount of violence found in Japan and that it did in fact make the murders committed there more gruesome.

Not to mention that declaring all non-perfect solutions to be of negligible effect is a fallacy in itself. We may be unable to completely stop murder but that doesn't mean that measures taken to reduce homicide rates (such as making firearms less available) are automatically pointless.

All this leads to is a policy of escalation. I get a gun to defend myself, of course the robbers are going to get guns. Bigger ones too. So then I get a bigger gun, and next thing you know you're being menaced by people with machineguns.

In the end, guns don't help you defend yourself. They only ensure any encounter with something you need to defend yourself against will result in a fatality.

The memo explained that students would be issued a pencil for use in class that would be collected at the end of the school day.

The memo cited behavior problems and said any student found in possession of a pen or mechanical pencil after Nov. 15 would be assumed to have the implement “to build weapons,” or to have stolen it from the classroom art supply basket.

and...

“This was an attempt to by a fairly new sixth-grade teacher to make changes that were not warranted. The student who was found with an altered pen was suspended and as far as administrators were concerned, the matter was put to rest,” Mr. Noseworthy said.

So yeah, the teacher had what she believed was a genuine problem with a certain privilege, and attempted to revoke it. She was overruled. Nothing all that insane here at all...

As long as everybody is equally unhappy, then things are fair. What would be unfair is for certain people to be happy when others are not.

Based on the rest of your post, I don't think you are advocating this position (merely stating why someone would do this). Still, I'd suggest that anyone who agrees with this notion to read Harrison Bergeron [tnellen.com], where "equality of outcome" is the central theme. This is where we will eventually be led.

Maybe we should just ban the kids from school? online instructor lead learning for all? Just think of the saving in facility costs and bussing alone (if it were done right, in reality burocrats would make it an overbudget ineffective waste of time)